There’s nothing particularly offensive about my blog, besides the quality of my writing – I’ll just throw that in there to pre-empt the usual comments – but to the undiscerning web filters deployed by the phone companies, the word “intercourse” triggers a red flag. Automated filtering is that heavy-handed, often relying on word lists to blackout certain sites. When Internet Service Providers (ISPs) set out to think of the children and save them from porn, they rarely do a very nuanced job.

The Government’s latest concession to the “won’t someone think of the children?!” lobby is to require parental filters for “pornographic content” as the default for all homes in the UK by the end of this year. Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s special adviser on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood (what a title), took to Channel 4 on Sunday night to trumpet the policy. Inevitably, the broadcast featured sepia-shot segments of children tapping away on computers and portentous piano music.

The plans are also expanding to cover public WiFi hot spots. Perry, who has a gift for scaremongering and no particular internet expertise, has said: “The analogy I’ve used with [ISPs] is ‘you’ve got yourself into a situation, by default, where you are peddling pornography to kids in a way that you never intended.’” That’s kind of like telling bookshops that they’re directly responsible for authors who pen erotica. ISPs, despite their efforts to be content companies, are largely responsible for providing the pipes, not the material that flows through them.

The default filtering measures championed by the Government sound impossible to argue against when the case for them is boiled to down to keeping children safe from adult material. The trouble is these systems are not at all sophisticated in the way they are applied, meaning that informative content on sexual health is often caught in the same net. That my blog is blocked by filters doesn’t bother me, but preventing teenagers from getting at educational sites is a problem.

Beyond the inadvertent blacking out of sex education resources, the content restrictions will also fail to address images shared via user-contributed sites like Reddit and Imgur and pictures snapped by teenagers themselves (that favourite tabloid obsession – seating). Trying to bolt the virtual door and keep children blissfully unaware of what is on the other side won’t work. Savvy teens will circumvent the filters while others unable to navigate the restrictions will be denied important information. The Open Rights Group has collected some ridiculous examples – including Orange blocking YouTube in its entirety.

MPs like Claire Perry sense there are votes in pushing their virtual Victorian agenda, but it is not desirable to reduce access to online resources where young people can learn about sex and sexuality. Conflating all sexual images and information on sexual health with hardcore material and abusive content is foolish. Do we really believe that teenagers today are so very different to previous generations? Most realise, as their adolescent ancestors finding porn scattered on recreation grounds did, that pornography isn’t real life.

We need to educate young people to think critically about the kind of material they will encounter in their adult lives. It would be wrong to discount filtering entirely, but the Government’s rhetoric is far too simplistic. Thinking that we can keep teenagers sequestered in a safe internet is even more ridiculous than a grown man writing a blog called Intercourse With Biscuits and a phone company deciding other grown adults need permission to look at it.